They're Coming for Your Accounts

Nearly
all of us grew up thinking that we registered ourselves to prove that
we were safe and responsible. We advertised our services as "registered"
or "licensed," and we never thought about it beyond that point. After
all, that was the way things were done, and we knew that it would help
our customers trust us.

There is, however, another side to registration, one that's about to bite a lot of decent people… and hard.

What Is Registration, Really?

What did we do when we registered with a government agency? We gave
them our name, address, birthdate, and so on. If we thought about it at
all, we thought that they were acting as some kind of guarantor of our
services. But what really happened was that we told them how to find us
and hurt us.

Registration involves making ourselves easy to find by enforcers, and
placing ourselves at their mercy. Yes, I know that we did it ignorantly
(I know I certainly did) and out of necessity, but we did hand our best
"how to find me" information to enforcement agencies.

Now, what I've described above involves commercial and professional
registrations. Unfortunately, the same thing applies to bank accounts
and retirement accounts. When you register those with a government, you
are telling them where your money is and making it very easy for them to
seize it.

Trillion Dollar Deficits

In recent years, the US government has been spending a trillion
dollars per year more than it takes in. (And there are many additional
factors at play.) The European situation is different, but not
particularly better.

These situations can only last so long. At some point, the
governments will need more money, especially as banks are ready to fail.

Governments will protect the big banks, at the expense of the citizens. You should take this seriously, and now.

The December 2013 document, right at the start, says that "financial
repression" is necessary. Here's what it says (underlining mine):

The claim is that advanced countries
do not need to resort to the standard toolkit of emerging markets,
including debt restructurings and conversions, higher inflation, capital
controls and other forms of financial repression.

It continues:

As we document, this claim is at odds
with the historical track record of most advanced economies, where debt
restructuring or conversions, financial repression,
and a tolerance for higher inflation, or a combination of these were an
integral part of the resolution of significant past debt overhangs.

So, in order to fix debt overhangs – currently at horrifying levels – financial repression is not just an option, but required.

That's not my interpretation; those are their words.

And, of course, they've already had a trial run, when they stole
funds directly from individual bank accounts in Cyprus, just last year.
Here's how that went down:

March 16, 2013: Cyprus announces a bank holiday and sets the terms
of a "bail-in" to save the banks: 6.75% of all bank balances under
€100,000 and 9.9% of balances larger than €100,000 will be confiscated.
In honest language, the word for that is "theft."

People screamed, and the government hemmed and hawed for a number of days.

March 24, 2013: People are permitted to withdraw €100 at a time from their bank accounts.

March 25, 2013: A bail-in deal is announced. Accounts with over
€100,000 lose either 40% of their money (Bank of Cyprus) or 60% of their
money (Laiki bank).

And, as it happened, a number of very rich people and companies were
permitted to withdraw their money in full, regardless of the "bail-in."

The IMF report goes on to say:

Governments can stuff debt into local
pension funds and insurance companies, forcing them through regulation
to accept far lower rates of return than they might otherwise demand.

… Domestic defaults, restructurings,
or conversions are particularly difficult to document and can sometimes
be disguised as "voluntary."

The paper that they slipped out three weeks ago adds this:

The Fund would be able to provide exceptional access on the basis of a debt operation that involves an extension of maturities.

That means that 30-day notes can be instantly turned into 30-year bonds.

The US Treasury Is Already on the Job

It's not just the IMF, of course. The US Treasury has had a group working on these ideas since the Bush administration.

And in August 2010, the US Departments of Labor and the Treasury held
joint hearings, deciding how best they could take control of all assets
in IRAs and 401(k) accounts. The decision was that they'd replace them
with "Treasury Retirement Bonds."

More Examples

In 2009, the government of Ireland swiped €4 billion from their
National Pensions Reserve Fund in order to prop up their insolvent
banks. The following March, they stole the remaining €2.5 billion for
another bail-out.

In November 2010, the French parliament took €36 billion from a reserve pension fund, to pay the debts of a "social" fund.

Also in November 2010, the government of Hungary effectively took
2.7 trillion forints ($13.5 billion) from 3 million retirement accounts.

The government of Poland nationalized one-third of future
contributions to individual retirement accounts. That money will almost
certainly disappear into the state treasury, robbing savers of some $2.3
billion per year.

So…

Understand that the financial powers that be – the IMF, World Bank,
Bank for International Settlements (BIS), assorted central banks, and
your local government – are ready to rob you.

When the time comes, all their usual sucker-bait will be pulled out:
"It only hits the rich," "We have to trash the economy to save it," "We
must all sacrifice," "It's for the children," and so on.

All the right-thinking people on television will wring their hands
and say it's the only way out. Perhaps they'll even let a bank or two
crash for good effect.

But in the end, they aim to steal your money. Government and the big banks will continue unharmed.

If you want to protect yourself, you need to get your wealth out of
registered accounts, because that's where they'll grab first.

Understand that these people have only two real choices:

Reform their system, close the central banks, and give up their power.